A Cool Introduction

Product: Ready2 Go Premodded Watercooled case.
Company: H2O Computers
Info: h2o-computer.com

Shortly after posting our little water-cooling project with Asetek components I was contacted by a company called h2o-computer.com with the question if we wanted to check out some of their components. Now as you could have learned from the Asetek article you know I initially was not a big fan of using water inside a PC... yeah initially. I've been converted, fact is that I want all primary systems in my office to be equipped with a water-cooling solution. Why you ask? Oh, just the noise level and the extraordinary cooling effect it has on components.

Now then, back to h2o-computers, frankly I had never heard of them and probably most of you don't know them also. So I'm happy to introduce them as a company that absolutely knows the business. In fact they sell their products in Europe and the USA. H2O-computers specializes in custom solutions, the high-end nifty gear that most of us guru's like so much. If you need a single small component for water cooling that's fine. Do you need a watercooled pre-modified case? That's fine also. Do you need a complete water cooled system? Hey... they offer that as well. In fact their 5000+ system is a pre-modified water-cooled Pentium 4 3.2 GHz system default clocked at 3.75 GHz on an Asus P4C800 mainboard with 1 GB memory and so on... if you need it then they can make you a complete water-cooled PC.

So within a small set segment of the market they cover everything you need and they are doing that in a very impressive way, whether that is a 2 EUR component or a complete modified PC, it just does not matter. So... why watercooling ?  Simple, it's one of the most efficient ways to cool down a component, it can be very quiet and if we take it one step deeper... overclocking.

But watercooling is not just for overclocking geeks anymore. The past year or two PC's and its internal components have faced two growing problems. Increased heat has added the need for better (and more expensive) cooling solutions and these cooling solutions have gotten much louder (when air cooling).

Back to overclocking. One of the most common and fundamental methods of increasing system performance lies in the CPU performance. Since the speed at which processes can be carried out depends on the clock cycle of the CPU (as well as the number of instructions that can be carried out per cycle), by overclocking (increasing the frequency) considerable speed can be gained. Since watercooling is one of the most effective ways to cool down a processor (CPU/GPU/CHIPSET), you have a large potential to overclock and thus make the system perform way above standard level. Overclocking has become increasingly popular ever since the value line-up of AMD and Intel products entered the market a few years ago. However, since the users are stepping over the manufacturer's recommended settings, excessive heat is one the major obstacles to overcome. If this little fact is not respected, the extra generated heat can cause major system instabilities, shorter processor life and, in some extreme cases, completely burn out the processor.

So always bare in mind before deciding to overclock, experienced and hardcore overclockers think first about cooling solutions. Proper cooling is indispensable even if the processor is not overclocked because this ensures a longer life for such a precious investment.

That being said, let's go towards page two of this review.